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Wet Corn Milling

July 2, 2012

Vincent is a very old screw press company, but with only a recent entry into wet corn milling. We only have a few installations to point to, but we definitely have our foot in the door.

Wet corn milling is the process by which corn is separated into its four basic components: starch, germ, fiber, and protein. Once separated, fiber and protein are made into animal feedstuffs; germ is refined into corn oil; and starch may be further refined as sweeteners, starches with specific traits, bioproducts or ethanol.

Dewatering the corn fiber left over after separation of the valuable starch and germ (which contains the oil) is our major application. In the process of making animal food from this by-product, the fiber is dewatered ahead of a dryer. This means that maximum moisture removal is important. Our first installation was at Pendik Nisasta in Turkey. This is a small mill, but a major USA firm is in it as a joint venture partner. They replaced two worn out Vetter fiber presses with Vincent presses a couple years ago, and they have been pleased with the performance.

After that we supplied a small fiber press to GPC in Muscatine. It replaced a Merconi C-400 bowl centrifuge.

We have had two interesting applications with Tate & Lyle. At their Louden, Tennessee mill they put in Model KP-24 presses to dewater fiber containing 40% residual starch. This was part of an ethanol production process likely to be modified next year. The application was challenging because fiber with that high a starch content does not want to give up its moisture. But the presses turned out well.

These same KP-24 "soft squeeze" presses were purchased for the Tate & Lyle mill in Ft. Dodge, Iowa, for the same process. These were never installed, and one ended up in their Lafayette, Indiana (south) mill. There it was placed as a pre-press ahead of existing Vetter fiber presses. This double pressing arrangement proved very successful in allowing the mill to sustain constant peak throughput capacity. At the same time they picked up 0.5% starch recovery. Plus energy savings. As a result an additional KP-24 was purchased for another line.

Most recently Vincent has booked an order for three Model VP-24 presses. These will be used on fiber, ahead of the dryer, in the GPC Muscatine, Iowa mill. This order followed a series of maintenance inspections and performance tests of the smaller rental press, which they purchased.

Vincent presses have proven to work well on foots. Our experience has been mostly with soybean foots, although we did some successful testing at a major IOWA corn mill a couple years ago.

Another area of interest has been dewatering corn germ. Germ must be dewatered before it is sent to the oil extraction facility. We did have success on corn germ at the Corn Products' Cardinal, Ontario mill several years ago. But the project did not go ahead; chalk it up as one more technical success but commercial failure for Vincent. We do expect to undertake a serious corn germ project fairly soon. We feel that our Series KP presses will prove suitable replacements for Frannino presses in this application.

Vincent now has a rental fleet of almost 200 of our screw presses! This gives us great flexibility for on-site testing. This rental fleet has been invaluable in our work in wet corn milling.